Opinio Juris - August 2008

Scroll down to learn about the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video, the Cuil Search Engine, the Value Line database, Open Secrets: 527 Groups, and the Google Election Video Search Gadget. For more information about other legal research topics, please visit the Library's blog.

Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video

The Center for Social Media and the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Clinic at American University have produced a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video. "This document is a code of best practices that helps creators, online providers, copyright holders, and others interested in the making of online video interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use." The Code addresses best practices for video makers in six common situations: (1) commenting or critiquing copyrighted material, (2) using copyrighted material for illustration or example, (3) capturing copyrighted material incidentially or accidentially, (4) reproducing, reposting, or quoting in order to memorialize, preserve, or rescue an experience, an event, or a cultural phenomenon, (5) copying, reposting, and recirculating a work or part of a work for purposes of launching a discussion, and (6) quoting in order to recombine elements to make a new work that depends for its meaning on (often unlikely) relationships between the elements.

Cuil Search Engine

Ex-Google employees have launched Cuil (pronounced "cool"), a new search engine. Cuil developer Anna Patterson believes that the new search engine indexes three times as many web sites as Google, although Google still claims to have the largest site index. Cuil presents search results in a more magazine-like, multi-column display, rather than the traditional list of results. Images and additional page content are also provided. Unlike Google, Cuil promises not to retain user information, which is a nice feature for users concerned about privacy.

Value Line Database

Value Line provides investment information on approximately 1,700 equity issues; every week about 135 stocks in seven or eight industries are covered. Upon entering the database, you are provided with monthly market performance for four markets (Dow Jones Industrial Average, NASDAQ, New York Stock Exchange Composite Index and Russell 2K) in comparison to the S&P 500; you will also be provided a search box to enter a stock ticker symbol (if you do not know the ticker symbol, you can use the “Symbol Lookup” option directly under the search box) for analysis of the same, including financial information and recent news articles. Along the left-hand side of the site, you are provided even more options, such as links to information on mutual funds, daily options, convertibles, and exchange traded funds.

Open Secrets: 527 Groups

527 groups are tax-exempt organizations that are able to use unlimited "soft money" for advocacy and political activities. The Open Secrets: 527 Committees web site provides information about these groups, inluding the groups' contributors and expenditures. The Open Secrets web site is sponsored by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Google Election Video Search Gadget

Google has launched the Google Elections Video Search gadget. This gadget uses speech recognition technology to automatically transcribe speechs from YouTube's Politicians channels. Using this gadget, users are able to search the actual content of the political speeches. The tool can identify when a specific work or phrase is used in the speech, and users can jump directly to the relevant parts of the video.

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